Gia Wolff’s latest architectural installation features a 25 ft diameter portal suspended above 2 Avenue between 36 and 35 Street in Industry City, Brooklyn. As part of Superfront Public Summer, the site specific piece is a reaction to the existing typological conditions and explores potential scenarios for the future of Industry City. Finnish for ‘portal’, Portaali refers to the Scandinavian dock workers who used to occupy the buildings in the late 1900s.
More about the installation, including a video, after the break.
For the installation, Tyvek is stretched within a bent steel frame which is then suspended in midair by ropes and connected back to the existing fire escape in a bicycle spoke pattern. With the help of 8 volunteers, the installation was hoisted above the street within five hours. “It is situated at the edge of a three-sided courtyard and is a physical threshold between the buildings as well as a metaphorical threshold, a portal, between the real and the imaginary,” explained Wolff.
